Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-04-08
To Make a Live Church, Members
Must Come in Good Season
by Railroad Time.
In a Live Church People Must Sing
Choirs, where Waterloo Battles
Rage, Must be abandoned.
In a Live Church the Sunday School Must
be Attended to and the Poor Children
Must be Brought in.
Snac,aI To the Gazette.


weeks, il which he preached and lectureC
in fifteen cities TO immense throngs.
vast congregation was present at the Tab
ernacle this morning, and joined witt
fine effect in singing the hymn which be
gins:
Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
Does his successive journeys run.
Or. Taimage's subject was, GA Live
Church," and his text Revelation H., SO
"UntO the ang, of the church in SmYrnt
write: These things saith the first anC
the last, which was dead and is alive;
know thy works, and tribulation anC
poverty, pat thou art rich"
Smyrna was
A GREAT CITY
of the ancients, bounded on three sides
by mountains. 1t was the central empO-
rum of the Levantine trade. In thai
prosperous and brilliant city there was 8
! Christian church established. After i
mad existed for awhile, it was rocked
down Dy an earthquake. 1t was rebuilt
! Then it was consumed by CoDtiagration
that swept over the entire city. That
| church went through fire and trouble and
disaster, but ke pit on to great spiritual
prosperity. The fact was that the church
| had tie grace OF God, an ever active
principle. Had it been otherwise, all the
grandeur of architecture and all the pOmp
Of surroundings would only have been
| the ornament of de8th-the garlandS OF a
coffin, the plumes of he2rse.
| Il may be profitable to consider what
| are the elements 1 f live church.
/ remark in the first place. that one
! characteristic of such church Is punct-
uality in meeting its engagements. All
ecclesiastical institutions nave financial
relations, and they ought 10 meet their
obligations just as certainly ga men meet
! their obligations at the bank. When a
| church OF God is not as faithful in its prom
! ises as the Bank Of England, it ceases to
! be church of God. 1t ougn. to be I'M
derstoOd that prayers cannot point q
church, and prayers cannot pay the
winters coal bill, and prayers cannot
meet the insurance; and that, while
prayers can do a thousand things,
there ere thousand things that
PRAYERS cannot do. Prayer for any par
ticular church will
NEVAR REACH HEAVEN
high unless it goes down pocket deep.
Ia my church at the west, there was q
man of comfortable means, who used to
pray for his pastor in such elongated
style that he became q nuisance to the
prayer meeting; asking God, in prayer
that was almost without Ceasing, that the
pastor might be blessed in his basket and
in his store, while the fact was he never
paid anything. Ii we pray for the adj
vanCemeEt of the church, and do not out OF
our means contribute for its advance
ment, uur prayer is only mOckery. Let
the church of GOO then meet its Obllga-
tions on the outside, and let the members
of the congregation meet the obligations
on the inside, and the church will be IL
nanCially prosperous.
Let me say, also, that there must be
punctuslity in the attendance on the
house of the Lord. If the service begins
at halt past 10 in the morning, the reg
ular congregation of a live church will
not come at quarter to IL. If the Ser
vice Is to begin at half past
Il in the evening, the regular
congregation of a live church will not
come at quarter to s. In some
churches have noticed the people are
always tardy. There are some people
VINO are always late. They were born
too late, and the probability is they will
die too late. The rustling of dresses up
the aisle, and the Scanning Of doors, and
the treading of heavy feet, is poor inspir-
alton for minister. 1t requires great
abstraction in pastors mad to pro-
coed with the preliminary exercises of the
church when one-half of the audience
seated are looking around to see the
other h2lf come in. Such a difference of
attendance upon the house of GOD may
be a difference of time pieces; but the
live church of which l am speaking ought
to go
By RAILROAD TIME,
and that is pretty well understood in ali
our communities.
There is one hymn that ought to be
sung in a great many Christian families
on Sabbath morning:
Early, my God, without delay,
] haste to Eek Thy place.
Another characteristic of live church
Is the fact that al the people participate
in the exercises. A stranger can tell by
the way the fist tune starts whether
there is any life there. a church that
does not sing is a dead church. 1t is
awful to find cold drizzie of music
coming down from the organ loft, while
all the people beneath sit in silence.
When a tune wanders around, lonely
aud unbefriended, and is finally lost
amid the arches because the people do
not Join in it, there is not much melody
made unto the Lord. In heaven they all
sing, though some there can not sing half
as well IS others. The Methodist church
has sung all around the world, and gone
from conquest to conquest, among other
things, because it is a singing church;
and any Christian church organization
that with enthusiasm perform this
part of its duty, will go on
from triumph to triumph. A church
of God that eau sing, can do anything
that ought to be doae. We go forth into
this holy war with the Bible in one hand
and hymn-book in the other. 0! yeI
who used to sing the praises of the Lord,
and have got out of the habi-, take your
harps down from the willows am glad
to know tina as chUTCa, We are making
advancement in this respect. When |
came to be your pastor we had an eX
cellent choir III the little chapel, and they
sang very sweetly to Us Sabbath Dy Sac
bath; but ever and anon there was
trouble, for you know that the chOirs in
the Uaitsd States sce the Wat-rl0os
where the battles go on. Ole Sunday
they will sing like angels, end the next
Sunday they Will be mad, and will not
sing at ell. We resolved ts settle al the
ard have one skiIlful man a.
the organ, and one msn to do the work Of
4 precentor; and now, from Sabbath to
Sabbath, the song comes up like the
voice of mighty thuuderiDgs.
Let those refuse to sing
Who never knew our God;
But children of the Heavenly King
Should speak their joys abroad.
On the way to triumph that never ends,